Mike’s comment drives home the fact that many of these home grown attempts have failed to make it easier than calling the bank. Making something simple to use is actually hard to do.

For many calling the bank, keying through the IVR and Waiting on hold while your cell phone gets dropped is a pretty frustrating experience.. (Citibank has poked some fun at this in their commercial where the guy shouts “big boy”).

Making it easy for you to get to the bank, and for the bank to get to you in a frictionless way to verify transactions when necessary is the key. Today fraud only occurs because it is too costly for a bank to verify unusual transactions with you. Creating a system that can pass the security and scalability tests of the banks and utilize the mobile phone as a channel for improving both security and access is our goal.

In Europe most major banks offer this functionality. Yet I have to find one person who really uses it (and isn’t using it just to prove something). It’s just so much faster to use telephone or online banking.